Note: measurements taken in the anechoic chamber at Canada's National Research Council can be found through this link.
This could be the easiest review I’ve ever written. Or the hardest. This here speaker in my room right now, the DALI Epikore 9, is so closely related to the Epikore 11, which I reviewed back in March 2024, that it’s essentially the same speaker with two fewer woofers.
Here at the SoundStage! Network, we don’t usually publish follow-up reviews of markedly similar products, for obvious reasons. After all, if you’ve just read a review of a product, why would you want to read another one that likely doesn’t cover much new ground? We’re not about to waste everyone’s time with unengaging content.
Not so fast. I’ve been ridiculously fortunate over the past year, with four superb speakers cycling through my system. From the YG Acoustics Peaks Ascent, to the DALI Epikore 11, to the Bowers & Wilkins 801 D4 Signature, and right up to the Børresen X6, I’ve been spoiled rotten for choices.
I could make a good argument for the Epikore 11 being the highlight of 2024 for me. I’d spent a week in Denmark in 2023 exploring the DALI factory and crawling inside the company’s new statement speaker, the Kore, with follow-up listens at several audio shows.
My review of the Epikore 11 was—so I like to think—quite complete, both in the description of the speaker and the report of my listening impressions. So what to do here? I could make it easy on myself and cut and paste huge swaths from my earlier review. That would be easy but unfair to these magnificent speakers in my listening room right now. Alternatively, I could try to reinvent the wheel, discarding everything I wrote and coming up with a brand-new take on the Epikore 9. That sounded like so much work—and such a hard review to write.
Actually, not that hard
Well, yeah, it sounded like a difficult task to me as I was unboxing the Epikore 9s. But my concerns melted away after I had gotten the speakers situated in my room and fired them up for the first time. I had found the larger Epikore 11s to be a touch warm in my room. In my review, I mentioned that if DALI simply cut one woofer off the top, and another off the bottom, reducing the woofer count to two in each cabinet, they might just have the perfect speaker for me.
So I wasn’t really that surprised when I heard that DALI was releasing a full suite of Epikore speakers. It just made so much sense to me. Here’s a speaker with a fantastic platform, but it’s too large for just about everyone. Scaling the Epikore 11 down into more manageable versions was an obvious move.
There are now four models in the Epikore lineup. The aforementioned Epikore 11, which still retails for $60,000 per pair (all prices in USD), is still the largest model. The Epikore 9 sells for a more manageable $40,000 per pair, and below that is another floorstander, the $25,000-per-pair Epikore 7. The smallest speaker in the line is the standmounted Epikore 3, which retails for $18,000 per pair, plus another $3000 for the matching stands.
Here’s where I will take a shortcut and ask you to slide on over to my review of the Epikore 11. I covered much of the technology that’s packed into the Epikore series in that review, so if you’re interested in more detail, that’s where you’ll find it. Further, the Epikore series of speakers has a great deal of trickle-down technology from DALI’s statement Kore speaker, so the factory tour I mentioned earlier is another go-to source for more details.
There are, however, some salient features worth a quick review. Most evident is DALI’s signature EVO-K hybrid tweeter array, which comprises a larger-than-usual 1.4″ soft-dome tweeter and a planar-magnetostatic supertweeter. The dome crosses over to the planar tweeter at 12.5kHz, which means that the dome tweeter can concentrate on high output and low distortion without worrying so much about extension into the higher frequencies.
One important difference between the new speaker and the Epikore 11 and Kore is the low-pass crossover of the woofers. The two larger speakers are four-and-a-half-way designs—the upper woofers roll off at a lower frequency than the lower woofers. In contrast, the two woofers in the Epikore 9 both cross over at 400Hz, making it a four-way design.
That functional difference aside, the Epikore 9 uses the same 8″ woofers and 6.5″ midrange driver (derived from the Kore) as the Epikore 11. The midrange hands off to the EVO-K tweeter at 3.1kHz. DALI specifies the Epikore 9 as a 4-ohm load, with a sensitivity of 88dB (2.83V/m). For a brief period, I hooked up my old Hegel Music Systems H90, and it did a decent job of driving the DALIs, but the overall sound was constipated and lacking in dynamics. I would imagine it comes as no surprise to learn that the Epikore 9 needs an amp with more substantial power reserves than the H90’s modest 60Wpc.
These are furniture-grade cabinets of the highest quality. The excellent build quality is reflected in the substantial weight. Checking in at 141 pounds, the Epikore 9 is a handful to set up and maneuver.
The Epikore 9 is a nicely proportioned speaker. It’s solid, substantial, and will define a room, but it’s gracefully curved, narrowing at the back, and so, so beautifully finished. My samples were finished in real walnut veneer and coated in an immaculate gloss lacquer. Probably because this was my second experience with the Epikore series, I noticed several aspects of the speaker that I had missed on my first go-round. Focusing on the edges of the cabinet, I could see how perfectly the finish was applied. The translucent lacquer was deep and consistent—deep enough to obscure the actual point where the two perpendicular surfaces met.
Another feature I didn’t really notice on the Epikore 11, given how rapidly I set it up in my haste to listen, was the brilliance of the spiked feet. I hate spikes. My basement listening room has a heated tiled floor installed over a concrete slab. And my main floor is solid oak flooring over wood joists. So there’s no carpet anywhere, so no need for carpet-piercing spikes.
Spikes, to me, are a royal pain in the ass, and I don’t see the need for them as the default footers of high-end speakers. Whenever I have to use spikes, I need to place them in some sort of floor-protecting cup so they don’t scratch my tiles or hardwood floor. It takes two people to install the cups; if I have to move the speakers, it’s a whole ’nother production. I’d much rather the default footer was some sort of hard rubber. Are any manufacturers listening?
The Epikore 9’s footers came with spikes installed as default.
So while my neighbor, Rob, held the speakers at an angle, leaned gently over and resting on a yoga mat, I installed the outrigger feet and prepared to wrestle with the supplied cups while gently cursing my career choice.
But wonder! The cups are magnetized! Rather than move them around on the floor to locate them as the speaker is slowly lowered, I could just plonk the cups up under the spikes, and there they’d stay. And when I needed to reposition the speakers, I could just walk them gently into place, and the cups would stay where they were! I hereby nominate the Epikore spike system as the accessory of the year. Please broadcast licensing details to all other manufacturers of high-end loudspeakers.
Binding posts are substantial, knurled metal jobbies, set up for biwiring. Wire jumpers are included in the accessory box.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
I wrote in my review of the Epikore 11 that the bass generated by eight 8″ woofers in my medium-sized listening room was a bit much. No matter where I placed them, the DALIs chugged out too much low end for my room. That said, the bass was so well behaved, so tight and defined, that I could listen to it with unqualified pleasure. A bass holiday, I termed it. At that time, I also ventured that an Epikore with two fewer woofers might be just the ticket for my room, and most likely for the majority of the audiophiles with less space than a hotel-sized conference room.
As I described in a previous installment of My Audiophile Neighborhood, I originally set up the Epikore 9s in my neighbor Rob’s place. The speakers ended up on his main floor, which is wider than mine, and has a high cathedral ceiling. It’s a large space, and one that can handle copious quantities of bass. Placement options are limited, as it’s a multipurpose living space, so we set the DALIs up in the most logical spot and—for the most part—that’s where they stayed.
My first listens to the Epikore 9s in that environment had me worried. Through these brand-new speakers, the bass was at least as elevated as it had been with the Epikore 11s in my room. Something about the Epikore 9s in Rob’s living room seemed to cough up a serious bass mode at around 50Hz. I left Rob to break in the DALIs, and over the next couple of weeks he reported back that they were sounding great, so I didn’t worry any more.
A couple of weeks later, when I was ready to move the DALIs into my listening room, I gave them another listen. The bass had calmed down somewhat, but was still elevated. The move into my house was uneventful, with the help of Rob and my dolly, which I think deserves her own name, given how useful she’s been lately.
Properly situated in my room, driven by the Hegel Music Systems H30A amplifier via Crystal Cable Art Series Monet speaker cables, the Epikore 9s settled in near dead-on perfectly. The elevated bass of the 11s in my room and the 9s in Rob’s room? Gone. The four 8″ woofers of the pair of Epikore 9s, two low to the ground and two higher up, exciting different modes in my room, filled the space with deep, rich, appropriately sized bass. I messed around with toe-in, but didn’t find much, if any, benefit from pointing them inward. DALI recommends placing the speakers to face straight forward, so that’s what I did—minus a couple of degrees of inward tilt for good luck.
I fired up “Yatzah” and “Lilin” from John Zorn’s The Circle Maker (16-bit/44.1kHz FLAC, Tzadik Records / Tidal), which have the best-recorded acoustic bass I’ve ever heard. Through the lower midrange and into the bass, the Epikore 9s accentuated the leading edge of each note, giving it power and majesty. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this trait might lead to a thickening of the lower registers, but that just didn’t happen. I noted in my review of the Epikore 11 that it portrayed bass instruments in a markedly different manner from any other speaker of my experience. It’s not just that the Epikores have quick bass. There was a feeling of instantaneous response on the first microsecond of a bass note: a response that almost seemed to rise and overshoot the transient.
In my review of the Epikore 11, I hypothesized that DALI’s implementation of SMC in its woofer and midrange motors might have something to do with the effortless initial bite and attack of that speaker’s bass and lower midrange. The same thoughts continued throughout my time with the 11’s smaller sibling. Both Epikore models presented bass and midrange instruments in a manner that’s unique in my experience. Bass and midrange notes stopped just as fast as they started, with zero overhang. Without adding even a hint of thickness or warmth, the Epikore 9s injected a feeling of body and corporeal reality. The upshot of all this was a huge sense of richness through the lower registers without the slightest feeling of accompanying slop. I know it sounds contradictory, but the Epikore 9s were rich and satisfying while being quick and tight at the same time.
“Hazor” is at the pivot from acoustic folk-jazz to electric avant-garde on this album. When Marc Ribot comes in with his crisp, surf-klezmer guitar, he’s backed up by an electric bass, and here the Epikore 9s captured the full, rich, juicy sound of that bass, giving it appropriate woodiness and low-end extension while keeping a tight rein on the leading and trailing boundaries.
DALI claims that the −3dB point of the Epikore 9 is 29Hz. That seems reasonable to me, and perhaps even a bit understated—in that stereotypically modest Danish way. Via Crucis: Liszt / Sept Paroles du Christ: Dubois (CD, Fidelio FACD012) is from the Fidelio label out of Montreal, Canada, and it’s full of bottom-feeder organ notes. The music is quite nice—very churchy—but I really only listen to my ripped copy for that organ. There are a few sections that reach down to the mid-20s, and the Epikore 9s reproduced those notes with appropriate power and room lock.
I recently picked up a DMM pressing of The Who’s Who’s Next (Polydor ARHSLP019). I love this album, but my beaten-up Canadian pressing is a total turd. Given my newfound love affair with “Baba O’Riley” triggered by my experience of PMC’s Dolby Atmos system at High End 2024 in Munich, I felt I owed it to myself to get a decent copy. I’m rarely impressed by the sound quality of remastered classic rock, but this album really wowed me. Through the outstanding LP system of my VPI Prime Signature turntable, DS Audio DS 003 cartridge, and EMM Labs DS-EQ1 phono preamp, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” rocketed out of the Epikore 9s with incredible depth and a dynamic, larger-than-life scale that quite literally took my breath away. After listening to the album through once, I started side 2 once again so I could pay attention.
This time, I focused on Roger Daltrey’s voice in “Behind Blue Eyes.” Here I noted that unique dynamic initiation of the waveform again, but now through the midrange. The Epikore 9s gave Daltrey’s voice a solid, meaty feel, making the image of his head seem slightly larger than life, as if his mouth was about a foot wide. I heard the same effect when I switched over to the Steven Wilson remix of Larks’ Tongues in Aspic from the King Crimson 1972–1974 box set (Discipline Global Mobile KCLPBX503). I always get a giggle out of hearing John Wetton in “Easy Money” trying to play the bass line in 3/4 time while singing in 4/4 time—it sounds like he’s really concentrating. Here, Wetton sounded full, rich, and appropriately chocolatey; no surprise, given what I’ve already noted.
And when it all breaks loose in “Easy Money,” Robert Fripp’s biting guitar sizzled across the room, with the correct amount of sting, but without any grain or unintended distortion. In my room, the Epikore 9s portrayed difficult high-frequency instruments like Fripp’s guitar with a complete lack of strain. The highs featured some of the same dynamic snap as the lower registers, but without that additional emphasis on the leading edge of the transient—which would be weird if it was there, I guess. These were clear, effortless highs; refined, sophisticated highs. Bill Bruford’s cymbals on “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Two” had a slippery, sinuous feel to them, spreading themselves across the soundstage in an almost visual manner, while simultaneously trailing off in a controlled, linear fashion.
In a large part, it’s the Epikore 9’s excellent dynamics that generated the immersive experience that I received while listening to “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Two.” I often listen to this track when evaluating speakers because it’s very dense and challenging. You never hear stuff like this at audio shows, because the complex interplay of five different instruments—more, really, if you consider all of the thrashing percussion—can bring a sub-par system to its knees. It’s a test, and failing it isn’t a mark of shame. But reproducing “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Two” with gusto, keeping the disparate instruments separated in space, is a triumph. The DALIs soared on this track.
Thus far, I haven’t mentioned much about imaging, because I mostly wanted to focus on the aspects of the Epikore 9 that make it so very different from other speakers of my experience. And looking back, I see that I have been going on about that at length. But listening through “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Two” for the gazillionth time, I was reminded in no uncertain terms how well these DALIs imaged. Reading back over my review of this speaker’s big brother, I see that I was captivated by the imaging prowess of the Epikore 11s. No real difference here—the Epikore 9s threw a massive soundstage. It was subtle, almost coy, in its presentation. It didn’t hit me over the head with unrealistic pinpoint microdetails. Rather, it spread a holistic soundstage with superb front-to-back layering. Images were realistically sized, with each of Jamie Muir’s percussion instruments easily discernable from each other, and from Bruford’s lanky, mechanical backbeat.
Superb versus excellent
It took me a good two weeks to get the taste of the Bowers & Wilkins 801 D4 Signatures out of my mouth. I was absolutely smitten by those big English speakers. Their larger-than-life sound, their look-at-me way of portraying music captivated me every time I sat down and listened to them.
Of course, I realized then that the 801s were far from neutral. I could clearly hear how they sculpted the midrange up through the treble, but I just didn’t care. I’ve never before had a speaker turn me around to this degree.
So moving to the Epikore 9s was a challenge. It was like drinking a quality Amarone after eating a volcanic beef vindaloo. I couldn’t taste anything. I could only hear what wasn’t there anymore. I needed that two-week reset to appreciate how good these DALIs are. But over that period, the brilliance of the DALIs began to settle in like a comfortable sweater, like the dew that falls just before the sun starts to rise.
There are many obvious differences. The 801s went lower in the bass, with more room-shaking authority. The Epikore 9s countered with the added presence and reality delivered by the delineation of the leading edge of the bass notes. In the upper midrange and into the highs, the DALIs drew me in with subtlety, grace, and luxurious comfort, whereas the 801s beat me about the head and neck with their laser-focused hyperrealism.
These are two wildly different speakers, and I am fairly certain that most prospective purchasers would gravitate to one or the other. Not me, though. I could happily spend my days with either of these speakers. Or, ideally, I wouldn’t have to choose.
As Lo Pan sneakily proclaims in Big Trouble in Little China when he notes that both Gracie Law and Miao Yin pass his flaming blade test: “I will marry both women.”
Imagine a huge listening room with both the DALIs and the B&Ws set up, one pair at either end. That would do me up a treat.
Small enough?
I originally pestered the folks at DALI, and also the frostbitten Canadian boys at Lenbrook Americas, DALI’s North American distributor, for the chance to be first up with the Epikore 9. This was mostly because I’d been so totally smitten by the Epikore 11. The only caveat with the larger speaker was the overabundance of bass, which meant it was just a bit too big for my room. The Epikore 9, with two fewer woofers, promised to be the perfect speaker for me. I had high hopes, and the Epikore 9 didn’t disappoint.
There’s a special magic in the Epikore lineup. I’ve heard that magic from the Kore and the too-big-for-me Epikore 11, and now from the just-right Epikore 9. This speaker, the Epikore 9, could well be the perfect speaker. At least it could be for the listeners in my neighborhood.
As we were boxing up the Epikore 9s, prior to shipping them off to their next destination, Rob said to me “I love these speakers. How about we say they got lost and move them to my house?”
He wasn’t joking.
. . . Jason Thorpe
jasont@soundstagenetwork.com
Associated Equipment
- Analog source: VPI Prime Signature turntable; European Audio Team Fortissimo S turntable, EAT Jo N°8, DS Audio DS 003 cartridges.
- Digital sources: Logitech Squeezebox Touch, Meitner Audio MA3.
- Phono preamplifiers: Aqvox Phono 2 CI, Hegel Music Systems V10, EMM Labs DS-EQ1, Meitner Audio DS-EQ2.
- Preamplifiers: Hegel Music Systems P30A, Meitner Audio PRE.
- Power amplifier: Hegel Music Systems H30A.
- Integrated amplifiers: Hegel Music Systems H120, Eico HF-81.
- Speakers: Focus Audio FP60 BE, Aurelia Cerica XL, Totem Acoustic Sky Towers.
- Speaker cables: Audience Au24 SX, Nordost Tyr 2, Crystal Cable Art Series Monet.
- Interconnects: Audience Au24 SX, Furutech Ag-16, Nordost Tyr 2, Crystal Cable Diamond Series 2.
- Power cords: Audience FrontRow, Nordost Vishnu.
- Power conditioner: Quantum QBase QB8 Mk II.
- Accessories: Little Fwend tonearm lift, VPI Cyclone record-cleaning machine.
DALI Epikore 9 loudspeaker
Price: $40,000 per pair
Warranty: Five years, parts and labor
DALI A/S
Dali Allé 1
Nørager
Nordjylland 9610
Denmark
Phone: +45 9672 1155
Website: www.dali-speakers.com
North American distributor:
Lenbrook Americas
633 Granite Court
Pickering, Ontario L1W 3K1
Canada
Phone: (905) 831-6555
